Although international organizations are typically seen as important actors promoting
better government institutions and reducing corruption, there are few comprehensive
analysis of how they promote such changes. This paper develops a theoretical
framework that traces the roots of IO success or failure to factors that are internal to
the strategies that they employ. We suggest that the tools used by international
organizations to promote quality of government can be categorized into four groups:
Inter-state competitive pressures; conditions on economic assistance; interaction with
transnational actors; and the enlargement of international communities. In contrast to
accounts that trace the roots of IO success or failure in member states to domestic
particularities, such as the amount of domestic resistance to government reforms, we
argue that the mechanisms themselves have a number of shortcomings that reduce
their effectiveness. Six such factors are identified: imprecise data, market pressures,
contested policy advice, incomplete internalization and lack of mainstreaming of
norms by international organizations and member states, and low priority of quality of
government issues. The paper thereby offers an explanation for why numerous
empirical studies fail to find a positive correlation between IO measures and better
government institutions
